Field lab meltdown | 50 years later delayed reaction

John Pace kneels at the reactor in 1959 inside the Sodium Reactor Experiment at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.

U.S. government photo, courtesy of ACME

Something was wrong. John Pace saw it in the men's faces, heard the anxiety in their voices and felt the nervous excitement in the nuclear reactor control room at the sprawling Santa Susana Field Laboratory. "I knew something had happened," said Pace, then a 20-year-old Moorpark resident working as a reactor trainee at the Sodium Reactor Experiment in the hills of eastern Ventura County.

At 6:25 p.m. on July 13, 1959, the experimental reactor's power went out of control, forcing a manual emergency shutdown after an automatic shutdown failed to kick in. It was the beginning of a partial meltdown, a rarity in U.S. history.

For 13 days, officials turned the damaged reactor on and off despite high radiation levels, more emergency shutdowns, and the release of radioactive gases into the air. In some cases, the readings exceeded monitoring instruments' capacity to measure them.

Workers at the reactor, operated by Atomics International, would discover that 13 out of 43 fuel elements were damaged during that period as portions of steel tube encasements melted into the uranium alloy fuel rods.

"The key to the excitement was they barely got the thing shut down before going critical and having an explosion," Pace said in a recent interview, recalling the events of that night 50 years ago. "They just felt so good that they were still alive and they got it shut down."

Pace was handed a roll of tape to keep radiation from seeping out of the reactor room and told to get to work. He sealed and double-checked doorways and other openings leading from the reactor area to nearby offices. A rookie tasked with learning on the job, Pace had received his security clearance and accepted the job only four months earlier.

For the next 49 years, Pace honored the top-secret nature of the work at the reactor, which was used in physics experiments and intermittently generated electricity for the town of Moorpark.

In recent years, knowledge of what occurred that summer has weighed heavily on the retiree's shoulders.

His reluctance to speak out began to wane when he saw a TV documentary about the little-known partial nuclear meltdown. Pace watched himself working on the reactor in vintage film, recorded for training purposes in fall 1959 and featured in the History Channel's "Modern Marvels" episode about California's first partial meltdown.

Moved to bear witness

Along with the televised account of the incident, Pace was moved by recent news reports of workers sickened by exposure to chemical and radioactive exposure at the Cold War-era facility, workers who faced difficulties or were rejected when they applied for a federal government compensation program because they lacked the needed proof of their employment and work assignments.

Pace's recollections dovetail with many of the accounts found in documents from that era, and he has come forward with them as state and federal agencies and the company involved are negotiating a further cleanup.

He remembers records being thrown out back after the reactor building was contaminated in August 1959. The paperwork landed in a heap behind the building, along with office furniture and other debris, Pace said.

But some events he witnessed were not recorded in Atomics International's internal reports on the incident.

"I see these stories, and it just hurts me inside to know these families are hurting so bad for information," Pace said in a recent interview, referring to former workers and their families. "It's a very important thing to me. I'm up in my 70s, and I'd like to get all these things documented so there are more true stories — truer stories — instead of some of the speculation."

Pace has lived for the past 16 years in Rexburg, Idaho, with his wife, Geneva, whom he married in the summer of the meltdown.

He acknowledges his accounts are limited to what he witnessed and heard as he helped scrub radiation from walls with soap and water, among other tasks during the summer and fall of 1959. The passage of time has muted his recollection of some details, but other images and conversations are etched into his memory.

It's true, Pace said, that workers from Rocketdyne, Atomics International's sister division that conducted rocket engine tests at the lab, were brought over to help with the cleanup. To record exposure to radiation, they wore film badges that were checked every night. Once they reached a certain level, the worker was banned from the reactor site for 30 days.

SRE workers were often told not to wear their badges, he said.

An improvised cleanup

It's also true, Pace said of a story that seems more lore than fact, that women's sanitary napkins were used to wipe down contaminated surfaces with cleansers gathered from around the 2,850-acre Field Laboratory after the meltdown. The absorbent material was more effective and longer lasting than sponges. A secretary suggested using them, he said.

"It was brilliant," Pace said. "When we were done we'd throw it in a plastic bag and throw it out back."

It's likewise true, Pace said, that radioactive gases were released. The night of the surge, the men — dressed in nothing more protective than cotton coveralls — worried about venting "hot" gases into the air.

"The big thing on their mind was which way the wind was blowing," Pace said. "They released that (gas) and it went out over the San Fernando Valley where all their children and families were, and they couldn't say a thing about it because it was top secret."

For decades, the partial meltdown was shrouded in secrecy, its details first revealed in internal company documents unearthed in 1979 by UCLA students in the wake of the meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Middleton, Pa., in March of that year. The same year, Rocketdyne, which outlived Atomics International, confirmed the event.

Questions persist today about the extent of damage caused by the meltdown on workers, those living in the shadows of the facility and the environment.

One scientist hired by defendants in a suit against the facility's owner described the disaster as likely releasing 15 to 260 times more radiation than Three Mile Island. The claim was rebuttted by a researcher for Boeing and the U.S. Department of Energy, whose predecessor agency had partnered with Atomics International on the development of 10 small reactors, including the SRE, at the Field Lab. Other incidents, more minor, occurred with some of the other reactors.

Health studies have arrived at contradictory conclusions. Those living around and working at the lab have higher cancer rates, according to some. Others determined that workers were not more prone to cancers.

Late notice limits study

Scientists' efforts to reach conclusions were partially hampered by limited information about the incident at the high-security site, researchers say.

Five weeks passed before Atomics International acknowledged something had happened on the hill.

By then, removal of the 13 damaged fuel bundles was under way. Efforts to dislodge a jammed fuel element went awry, the company conceded. That action contaminated the building, and decontamination had started, Pace said.

The incident and the high radiation exposure in the reactor room and its exhaust stack are recorded in the company's reports. But the company's Aug. 29, 1959, press statement ignored the event and the power surge and downplayed what happened to the fuel in the reactor's core. It claimed only a single fuel bundle was damaged.

"The fuel element damage is not an indication of unsafe reactor conditions," the statement read. "No release of radioactive materials to the plant or its environs occurred and operating personnel were not exposed to harmful conditions."

An interim report on the surge and meltdown would later conclude that no radiological hazard was present in the reactor areas. The same report, published Nov. 15, 1959, detailed high levels of radiation in the reactor building and stated reactor gases were released twice — on July 15 and July 22.

Reactor gases were released frequently during the two weeks after the surge, Pace said. Every time the reactor was brought up to power and then shut off, radioactive gases were released, often without being held in holding tanks to diminish their radioactivity, he said.

More firsthand accounts sought

Gregg Dempsey, a senior science advisor with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, met Pace in December 2008 and found his recollections valuable. Dempsey is a key member of a team conducting a study to determine radiation levels at the Field Laboratory. He would like to find more people who worked there.

"He was very aware of what was going on around him because he was expected to learn it," Dempsey said of Pace. "The reason I enjoyed talking to him is his memory of his time there was so sharp."

Pace returned to the Field Laboratory last winter for the first time in more than 49 years, accompanied by Dempsey, local activists and a Boeing representative.

In an area that now is mostly open field, Pace described where buildings once stood. He pinpointed the slope where the old weather equipment once sat. It was his job to gather weather data and determine which way the wind was blowing.

Standing on the slope's crest, Pace looked at Simi Valley and Moorpark and saw that the once-small towns surrounded by open fields and citrus groves were now full-grown cities spreading across the valley floor.

"It was a little spooky going back there," Pace said later. "Up at the hill I could remember where I used to walk around. Spooky because there was supposed to be more there. I could see it in my mind and see what it was. It was like looking at a ghost."

New program, an eager apprentice

Construction on the Sodium Reactor Experiment began in April 1955. The reactor was part of a program by Atomics International and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to develop a sodium-cooled reactor that could be employed for civilian uses. It also was used in experiments.

"It was different," Pace said. "It wasn't like going to a reactor today that is set for making electricity. Each day I went to work it was a different experiment or they were trying different types of fuel, seeing what type of fuel would work the best under different circumstances."

Pace, who grew up in Northridge and graduated from Reseda High School, had moved to Moorpark with his family in 1958. He'd grown up around his father's auto body and paint business and was well-versed in mechanics.

Newly engaged, he applied for the trainee position at Atomics International with the help of a family friend and started work in March 1959. He and Geneva married several months later and bought a house in Thousand Oaks. He was laid off in November of that year.

"I enjoyed what I was doing," Pace said. "It was quite an honor to work there in those days, for somebody at my age to have that kind of work there, especially if you didn't have an education."

Pace called the period "a different time." The Korean conflict had ended, but the Cold War persisted as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev threatened nuclear war and the United States honed its nuclear defense.

Calm without, trouble within

Security was tight at the Field Laboratory. Driving up Black Canyon Road on July 13, 1959, everything appeared to be in its place. The guard at the lab's front gate gave no indication anything was amiss, Pace said.

For the next four months, work revolved around the power surge and meltdown. Without precedent to set their course, SRE officials proceeded to diagnose and fix problems through trial and error.

The damage was caused when a chemical used to cool the pumps that pushed the heat-absorbing sodium around the fuel bundles leaked into the sodium. The mix caused a gummy substance that blocked the sodium flow, causing the fuel to run hot and meld with the steel tubes that encased it. Similar leaks had previously occurred.

The sodium in the reactor was drained and removed in large drums and taken to an open-air burn pit, Pace said.

Laura Rainey, a senior engineering geologist with the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, was struck by Pace's description of the types of waste and debris generated by the meltdown and its aftermath.

"That was a very important day," Rainey said about meeting Pace during his December visit. "The thing I value most is he brings the human side to the history."

Wrong button uncovers the danger

Removing the damaged rods, some of which were stuck in place, proved daunting. By Aug. 2, six of the fuel elements had been removed from the subterranean reactor floor, according to Atomics International reports.

On that day, a protective cask was lowered into the reactor to encircle and remove another damaged rod. As the cask was pulled up, the fuel rod broke apart. A portion remained in the reactor core, the other half lodged in the cask.

"It was such a shock to the operator, he panicked," Pace said. "He pushed the wrong button to stop it to see what had happened."

Pushing the wrong button, he added, "lifted the lead shield off the floor that protected against radiation leaking out of the reactor core."

With the shield up, the whole building was contaminated. The panicked worker ran and "signaled with the alarm for everyone to get out of the building," Pace said, adding that another worker volunteered to re-enter the reactor room to lower the shield.

The building and surrounding area were off-limits for two weeks.

Pace acknowledges he did not observe that event, and learned of it from his supervisor, who instructed Pace not to come to work. Workers were let back in two weeks later, and Pace helped clean up the contamination, washing down walls and floors and throwing out office equipment.

The reports do not mention the shield being opened but mention high levels of contamination and note that some time was spent refining another cask and testing it. A test run took place on Sept. 22.

Containing the problem brings risk

Another fuel rod also broke off in a cask on a day when Pace was present, as he watched workers raise and lower the transporter trying to pull the fuel rod into the protective cask, he said.

Workers peered under the lead shield to see if the fuel rod had cleared the top of the subterranean reactor. Every time the lead shield was up, the reactor room was exposed, Pace said.

In one of the most recognizable photographs from the SRE incident, Pace is pictured peering into a hole. He said he is not looking to the reactor core but rather looking into a piece of equipment used to remove broken pieces of fuel, to see if it was properly aligned.

In another photo, Pace and other workers are turning a giant spoked circle atop the reactor core. The men were trying to rotate the reactor lid so a large lead plug could be positioned over fuel rods so they could be removed, Pace said.

"With the seal broken on the lid of the reactor, it released radioactive contamination that had to be cleaned up," he wrote in pencil on a copy of the photograph.

Pace believes the exposure to contamination caused his health problems and those of other workers. He was diagnosed with a precancerous skin condition and has trouble with his lungs.

He and Geneva were unable to conceive children for seven years after he left the Field Lab. In 1966, his doctor diagnosed him with temporary sterility, which he links to the reactor, and his wife had a number of miscarriages before giving birth to their three children.

He doubts report on exposure

While visiting the lab last winter, Phil Rutherford, manager of health, safety and radiation services for the Boeing Co., said he showed Pace his "dosimetry report," which documents how much radiation a person has been exposed to. Pace's report showed "a minor level of exposure."

Pace said that several years ago he heard there was such a report, but he puts no faith in it because the records are incomplete, because some were lost and workers' exposure wasn't always recorded because film badges weren't always worn.

"We didn't wear our badges there all the time," Pace said, adding that supervisors would tell the workers not to wear them. "That's what they wanted."

Pace said he understands that officials today are limited in their understanding of what happened to the documents available to them.

"I have no ill feelings towards them because they were not there," Pace said of officials today. "They can only go on the records they have."

He said he was motivated to speak up to add to the public's knowledge about the events, which some researchers have blamed for possibly hundreds of cancer cases among workers and people who lived near the hill.

"It's a cleansing feeling to get it out of you and be able to speak about it," Pace said. "It relieves a lot of pressure, but it's a scary thing also."